Police seek footage from official broadcast channel

The Delhi police have approached Sony Set Max channel, the official broadcaster of Indian T20 league matches, asking them to provide raw footage of the three matches in which S Sreesanth, Ajit Chandila and Ankeet Chavan have allegedly indulged in spot-fixing.

Police said the scrutiny of the raw footage will help them know what the arrested players were doing during the advertisement breaks and strategic timeouts.

According to a senior investigating officer, the arrested players had to give a pre-determined signal to the bookies before starting the fixed over.

Delving deep“With the recorded telecast footage we have found the signals that were used by players to hint the bookies that they will start the fixed over. But we need to know their activities during advertisement breaks and strategic timeouts,” said the officer adding they will send voice samples of the arrested players and bookies to forensic lab to match them with voices in the intercepted conversations.

Investigators said the case is “still open-ended” as they have sent teams to four cities — Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Mumbai and Hyderabad — to trace the money trail. Police are also looking into the bank accounts of the players to see the flow of money and are trying to find out how it was spent.

Though lawyers of all the three players have denied involvement of their clients in spot-fixing, investigators claim that the players have confessed their crime.

Senior investigators added they will talk to ICC and BCCI officials on Monday if they approach them. “We have already shared information with a senior BCCI official who approached us on the first day itself and also on Friday,” the officer said.

The CCTV footage of a meeting of Chandila and a bookie on May 9 in a Chandigarh hotel is also being sought. Asked about evidence against the Kerala pacer, the sources did not say whether he directly spoke to the bookies but claimed that he used Jiju’s phone, which was being tapped, to speak to “others”.

“We have strong evidence against him. We know how he got the advance from the bookies.”